


Lionsbane

by Immanuel



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000, Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors
Genre: Black Crusade, Dark Angels, Destruction of Caliban, Gen, Screaming Vortex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-26 02:49:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7557151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Immanuel/pseuds/Immanuel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sar Lanval El'Lucien, a Moritat in the Dark Angels legion exiled to Caliban, seeks out the Dreadbringer amidst the chaos of battle when the Lion returns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lionsbane

“STARFIRE.”  
  IT BEGAN with a single word. A single word that would shatter a Legion, _the_ Legion, and change the course of history. When First Master Astelan uttered that word, Lanval El’Lucien smiled. It was the first time he had smiled since Melian sought to depose Luther, Grand Master of the Order. Since the last time he had been given the order to murder his brothers.

“I have come!” he roared. “I am death!”  
  Lanval sought them out amidst the chaos. Following the skulls in the hourglass, the mark of the Dreadwing. They were few. They had always been the smallest in number of the hexagrammaton. They were mighty.  
  _Tobhara_ barked in his right fist as he descended on wings of fire. _Ayinhara_ echoed the report in his left as he landed. Angels fell where he directed his dread will.  
  “Constantine!” he fired both pistols, putting a pair of bolt rounds through the eyes of a Dark Angel bearing the mark of crossed blades. The Deathwing were leading the charge. He killed them gladly, joyously, but his true target eluded him.  
  “Dreadbringer!” he shouted the challenge through his external address. He shouted it on every open vox channel. “The glass has turned! The grains have fallen! Every sin shall be avenged!”  
  He pulled back his hand in shock.  
  A crackle of energy pulsed up his arm, though he did not feel it through his power armour. When he pulled the hand back, _Tobhara_ was a smoking ruin.  
  He ducked, cursing himself for his distraction. The executioner’s axe glanced off the hardened plating of his Mark III armour in a shower of sparks.  
  A column of flame from his jump pack put breathing room between him and his attacker. He levelled _Ayinhara_ at his enemy’s left eye, discarding the bisected remains of _Tobhara_.  
  “Where is the Dreadbringer?” he demanded, seeing the mark of the Dreadwing amongst the gaudy livery of a Paladin. “Where is Constantine?”  
  The Paladin laughed. He actually _laughed_ at him as he charged.  
  “Dead before you ever had your chance, traitor,” the Paladin hissed through gritted teeth as Lanval gripped the haft of the axe in his newly freed hand.  
  _Ayinhara_ put a burst of shells into the Paladin’s abdomen, but his artificer-wrought plate held firm. Lanval pushed his enemy away and holstered the pistol, facing his enemy unarmed.  
  “Who is the Dreadbringer, then?” he asked, circling his enemy. “Who leads the Dreadwing?”  
  “A better man than you,” the Paladin replied, spinning the axe before entering a guarded stance.  
  It would have appeared menacing to most foes, no doubt. To Lanval, it was almost comical. Not just for its pomposity, but for the laughable over-compensation in the face of an opponent bearing no arms of his own.  
  “Better men was never the way of the Dreadwing,” he chided.  
  A wordless bellow came from the Paladin as he lunged forward, axe swinging in a sweeping diagonal arc that was almost impossible to avoid. Almost.  
  Lanval fired his jump back for a split second, passing gracefully over the enraged angel. A second burst drove him into his enemy’s back with the force of a ramming battle tank. The executioner’s axe flew from the Paladin’s grip.  
  The two combatants tumbled to the ground, the Paladin’s hands wrapped around Lanval’s neck. While his enemy choked him through the armour-flex seal between breastplate and helm, his own hands reach towards the Paladin’s waist.  
  A wave of crimson washed across his vision as he sent a beam of volkite energy through the base of his enemy’s skull. He grunted in pain as deflagrating arcs of the serpenta’s discharge crackled across his own plate. The smell of burning flesh filtered through his osmotic gill, though he was unsure whether it was his own or the Paladin’s. Both, most likely.  
  ++Moritat!++  
  The voice buzzed in his ear, a distraction from the glory of destruction. He rose, the stolen volkite serpenta still smoking in his hand, to look down on the scorched ruin of the Paladin.  
  “Have you found the Dreadbringer?”  
  ++Moritat – the sky!++ the voice stammered.  
  Lanval deactivated the vox, not prepared to deal with a shell-shocked inferior. Then he saw.  
  “By the Ouroborous,” he cursed.  
  Looming over him, he saw the walls of the Angelicasta, silhouetted by fires sweeping across the battlements even as the void shields rippled in the face of orbital bombardment. The source was the fleet of warships hanging in the sky. The greatest among them was falling. The _Invincible Reason_ herself, ripped in half by the defences of Aldurukh, was falling from heaven. Not invincible after all.  
  Yet it was none of this that held Lanval’s gaze.  
  In the skies above Caliban, more distant even than the vengeful fleet of the thrice-cursed primarch Lion El’Jonson, there was a rock. A rock on which stood a warped facsimile of the Angelicasta. A rock that seemed to hang behind a translucent veil.  
  Darkness fell.

He opened his eyes on a barren wasteland. A plain of black ash stretched to every horizon. This was not Caliban. It could not be Caliban. A swirling vortex dominated the sky, but it was different from the maelstrom that haunted midwinter nights on Caliban. It was silent, but it was screaming. Even the stars were strange.  
  Several of his armour systems were damaged. His chainsword, _Dreadfang_ , was still at his hip along with _Ayinhara_. A handful of rad grenades remained in the bandolier across his chest. Warning runes linked to his jump pack winked an insistent red. He released the harness and let the pack drop behind him. It was a poor arsenal for a lone angel on an unknown world.  
  He noticed the volkite serpenta lying in the dust at his feet. He was sure it had not been there before. He picked it up, turning it over in his hands. An oath of moment fluttered in a sudden gust of wind. He tore it free, reading what remained legible on the tattered parchment.  
  _I shall be the judgment of the Lion and the bane of Luther_.  
  He sneered, crumpling the oath paper in his fist and casting it aside.  
  “You are _Lionsbane_ now,” he growled, holstering the pistol where _Tobhara_ once sat. “Wherever you are, whatever you have done to me, I will find you.”  
  He set off towards the horizon, where for a split second he swore he had seen the silhouette of a robed figure. After barely a hundred paces, the jump pack he left behind in the dust exploded behind him in a ball of fire.  
  “I have come,” he whispered. “I am death.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sar Lanval El'Lucien is my Black Crusade character, and this is the story of how he acquired his Cursed Heirloom (using the rules for a Legion Plasma Pistol to pass as a volkite serpenta).


End file.
